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Monday, 31 October 2016

Happy harvest Monday, happy Halloween (whatever happened to spelling it Hallowe'en) and happy b-day to my brother! What a day. I arrived home around 4am last night from a visit to my family in BC ... got back to my car after the flight and my battery was dead so waited for the auto club to give me a boost.

I'm pretty much sleeping the day away but popped out to the greenhouse (thanks Glen for watering while I was away!) and picked the last of the peppers. These are definitely the last, as the plants all died. The greenhouse is not heated and there is a small gap under the door (need to do something about that) so when the temperature drops below freezing, the plants die. So the plants were dead, but the peppers were totally fine still, although not as mature as they should be.

This is 4 pounds of peppers, mostly Feher Ozon (along the top). Also included in the harvest (sort of left to right, bottom) are a few jalapenos, Hungarian Hot Wax, King of the North, Gypsy and Super Red Pimiento.

Once I get myself caught up after the holiday, I look forward to seeing what everyone else has been doing the past couple of weeks. Linking in here to Harvest Monday hosted by Our Happy Acres.

Monday, 17 October 2016

I harvested these beans in mid-August when the plants were drooping over from too much rain. I couldn't be bothered to stake them up (they are all bush beans) so harvested them a bit early. But better than having them rot in the ground as happened the previous year with my Borlotti bean crop. I left these for a couple of weeks to dry and eventually got around to shelling them all and finally here are the results.

From left to right in the main photo: Vermont Cranberry, Black Turtle, Jacob's Cattle and Canadian Wild Goose. Other than the Black Turtle, the beans were all purchased from Heritage Harvest Seed.

I haven't tried any of those yet, but a portion of the black beans (pretty much my favourite food) went into these stuffed peppers along with some of my recently (last week, in fact) harvested sweet potatoes. SO GOOD!

The only real harvests this week were a handful of Albion Hybrid parsnips (just to check them out, no rush):

And these two pretty carrots:

The carrots were found while getting a raised bed ready for the garlic that I planted this weekend. NOTE TO SELF: garlic planted alphabetically West to East: Gem Purple Stripe, German White Rocambole, Hungarian Rocambole, Leningrad Porcelain, Music Porcelain.

And a few more peppers from the greenhouse (two each of Gypsy, King of the North, Hungarian Hot Wax):

The green tomatoes (Chocolate Cherry) that I picked before the frost were layered in newspapers with the few ripe ones available. They have since been dehydrated and stored in the freezer.

This post will be submitted to the Harvest Monday collection hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres. Please stop on by his site to see what other gardeners are doing this week!

Sunday, 9 October 2016

And holy peppers! With a risk of frost expected Monday morning, I spent some time Sunday harvesting anything I could find that might be damaged, including 10 pounds of peppers! I was waiting as long as I could to harvest these as most should have ripened to red or yellow and I'm not a huge fan of green peppers. But I wasn't about to take a chance of losing them. I've had such a great year for peppers as the weather was consistently hot through most of the summer.

This latest batch (shown above from top left) includes: Gypsy, a single Super Red Pimiento, jalapenos, a big bunch of King of the North bell peppers and finally some Ancho.

And had some of the largest jalapenos I've ever grown!

It was just as well that I harvested the peppers. Even if there was no frost, the temperatures are now below 15 degrees C on a regular basis so unlikely they were going to mature much more. And the critters (most likely voles) have been doing plenty of damage so quite a few ended up in the compost.

This riper batch, mainly Feher Ozon, was picked earlier in the week from the greenhouse (where I still have a dozen plants in containers).

I harvested a batch of both ripe and green chocolate cherry tomatoes earlier in the week and did a final sweep after seeing the frost warning.

And grabbed the last few beans.

A bit of a surprise harvest was this rhubarb. The plants had quite a revival in recent weeks once the weather cooled off. I don't think I've ever harvested rhubarb after June but it looked so good I thought I'd freeze some.

Sweet potato plant in a fabric grow bag

With the frost warning, I knew it was time to finally harvest the sweet potatoes. Definitely not worth the effort for me considering the yield (and having spent months babying those darn slips all spring). I had three slips planted into a fabric grow bag and another three plants in a small plot - and this is all I ended up with!

Sweet potatoes and the last of the beets

Nice to have a few and I'm very much looking forward to eating them but I don't expect I'll grow those again. But I will grow celery again! This was my first try and I'm pretty happy with the results (a few loose spears on the left and the rest of the plant on the right).

I am linking in to Harvest Monday hosted by Our Happy Acres. I look forward to seeing what other gardeners have on the go this week!

Monday, 3 October 2016

I have not had much time in the yard this past week. I have harvested the odd greens and such, but not enough to bother with pictures. I did harvest the last two melons (below) and found two other large melons that should have been picked much earlier (the critters got to them before me).

So I thought I'd take the opportunity for my annual funny veg shots ... what do you think these look most like?! I'll be linking up with Harvest Monday posts hosted by Our Happy Acres to see what other gardeners are doing this week!